


here comes the sun

by sinagtala (strikinglight)



Series: kiss prompts [7]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Established Relationship, Filipino Lance (Voltron), M/M, Museums, Vietnamese Keith (Voltron), established-ish, keith gets all the smooches later to make up for it, lance's sisters visit the museum and get left in keith's care and make a mess, space museum volunteers au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-14
Updated: 2017-11-14
Packaged: 2019-02-02 00:07:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12715677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strikinglight/pseuds/sinagtala
Summary: Keith figures he’s about three-quarters of the way through reassembling the solar system by the time Lance finds him sitting on the floor of the staff room, a soldering iron in his hand and two planets at his feet.





	here comes the sun

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bluejane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluejane/gifts), [mayerwien](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayerwien/gifts).
  * Inspired by [it's quite bizarre, and will remain this way](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7703221) by [mayerwien](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayerwien/pseuds/mayerwien). 



> OK WOW so this one really spiraled...... A request (and late birthday gift, ish!) for Mich, for prompt #17: goofy kiss. There was a lot of buildup to the actual kissing, but I hope the whole thing is worth it, hahahuhu.
> 
> This takes place in roughly the same universe/continuity as the [all of these stars will guide us home](https://archiveofourown.org/series/605743) series, which is the brainchild of the wonderful May, to whom this is also dedicated. I tried to make this so you could read it without prior knowledge of the source material--but, that said, I urge you, most ardently, to go read her stuff and show it some love if you haven't. Right now. _Right now_. (ILYSM May, thank you as always for letting me play in your worlds.  <3)
> 
> Title from That One Song by the Beatles.

Keith figures he’s about three-quarters of the way through reassembling the solar system by the time Lance finds him sitting on the floor of the staff room, a soldering iron in his hand and two planets at his feet.

 _“Duuude.”_ Lance’s forehead is filmed with sweat and his hair’s sticking out at odd angles, and if Keith’s being honest, his eyes look really scary right now, buggy and blue and opened up so wide they look half about to roll out of his head. “Dude. Dude. I am _so_ sorry. Ats told me what happened.”

Keith feels his face heat. He knows this is only partially because of his work. “It’s okay, you don’t have to worry about it.”

Lance’s mouth opens again so fast Keith’s sure he’s about to say _I do_ too _have to worry about it,_ but then he stops. Looks at the plastic revolving model in front of Keith, and the soldering iron, and Mars and Jupiter, dead on the floor. Maybe he decides it’d be best not to antagonize Keith while he’s holding a heated metal object that’d be all too easy to use as a weapon. Maybe his own exhaustion after a full afternoon of tours catches up with him. Either way, he closes his mouth again, and plops down on the floor across from Keith, leaning forward to watch as he continues to tinker.

“Man, they really did a number on, uh, the solar system.” Lance raises his eyebrows, lets out a soft airy whistle through his teeth as Keith begins reattaching Jupiter, welding the two pieces of the snapped plastic rod that connects it to the model’s base back together. “On you, too! You look beat.”

Keith doesn’t answer, just makes a throaty little noise somewhere between a laugh and a groan, because he kind of can’t believe how far from over the day is. It was only a couple hours ago that Lance’s sisters had dropped by the museum unannounced, because as it turned out the little girls didn’t have class because it was the feast day of their school’s patron saint or something, and their eldest sister Paulie didn’t have class because sometimes colleges called off class for no reason, which naturally had meant a Surprise Your Brother At Work Day was in order. Never mind that this just happened to fall on a day that said brother was booked through with field trip tours all afternoon—because naturally every school that _did_ have class had had the bright idea to send their sixth-graders here, an hour apart.

And because Pidge was home sick with the flu and Hunk couldn’t come off the special robotics exhibit he’d been put in charge of—A.K.A., was guarding with all the vigilance and devotion of an especially protective mother bird—enter Keith. _My best guy,_ Lance had said with a wink, before running off to meet his third batch of sixth-graders by the entrance. _He’ll definitely show you a good time._

Full disclosure: if he hadn’t had work to do and sixth graders to supervise, Keith thinks he might have throttled Lance right that second. Because how in the _universe_ was Lance expecting Keith to show his sisters—only his favorite people ever, after his mom and dad—a good time when he had met them a grand total of once for five seconds before this and could barely get all their names straight in his head? To say nothing of the _best guy_ thing. There was the older one, Paulie—Ats to Lance, short for _Ate_ Paulie, but Keith had never dared call her that himself because how presumptuous could you be?—and then. Amy? He was pretty sure the biggest of the little ones with the big voice to match was Amy, but everything after that was kind of a blur. Between the next little one and the littlest one he thought one of them might be an Alliana (or an Alyssa? or an Allura? but that was the boss and she was foreign, so scratch the last one), and the other an... Angel? Anselle? Ariel?

Whoever they ended up being, Keith was certain he was gonna die. They’d kill him for boring them if his nerves didn’t get him first.

Never mind the little voice in his head now that’s reminding him, _But you didn’t die,_ as he solders Mars back into place. He didn’t die when _(Ate)_ Paulie asked him the difference between asteroids and meteorites, or when Amy and the Next Little One chased each other around the moon, or when the Littlest One slipped her hand into his as they entered the Constellation Room, windowless and dark and lit up only by the stars in the walls. Instead he had, to his credit, gotten down on one knee so she could see his face, and pointed up to Ursa Minor, and told her how in the distant past it had helped sailors find their way home.

(He didn’t even die when they passed Lance with his sixth-graders on the way to Robotics, even if Lance had waved at them so excitedly he’d nearly popped an arm, and winked at Keith _again_ in that annoying way of his that made Keith’s stomach go zero-gravity.)

And maybe his worry about dying had peaked in the playroom after the tour, when Paulie took down the revolving model of the solar system for the three little ones because they’d wanted to play at being God, and they’d made a contest of it, to see who could spin the planets faster, and faster, and faster—until someone’s shoulder knocked into someone else’s, or someone stuck their elbow out too far, and then the solar system was tumbling off the tabletop, exploding in a shower of plastic parts on the floor to a chorus of shrill screams and garbled apologies and _SHE DID IT!s._ But he didn’t die then, either, only picked up the pieces: _It’s okay! It’s okay. I’ll fix it. Don’t worry._

Because he didn’t die, because he was somehow still alive to walk the girls all the way to Paulie’s car and say _I hope you guys had a good time_ and wish Amy a good evening voice lesson, Keith is here now. Fixing the planets, as promised.

“Not at all,” he says, after a long pause, while Mars and Jupiter settle back into their orbits. “I was happy to do it.”

Which is not a lie. Lance gives Keith a lot of grief for being stingy with his feelings—for being stoic, or emo, or _baduy,_ whatever that means—but Keith would argue he’s only stingy with _some_ feelings. When he thinks something is a drag, for instance, everybody knows.

It’s a little scary when Lance is so caught off guard he completely runs out of things to say. He looks that way now, kind of, eyes bugging out a little again as he looks down, flicking at a couple of the planets with his fingertips so they start to spin around the sun. Not the delicate, freshly-welded ones, but Saturn and Venus, and Earth, too, all right where they’re supposed to be.

Then he looks up and flicks Keith’s forehead. “They loved you, if you wanna know.”

 _Ow, asshole!_ is the first set of words at the front of Keith’s mind. The second, unexpectedly, is much longer:

_I love them too. I think I could love everybody you love._

But that sounds kind of dumb, or somehow not enough—not enough for Paulie’s smile or Amy’s voice or the Next Little One’s thundering footsteps or the Littlest One’s tiny hands—so he can’t quite bring himself to say it.

“I... think they’re really cool too,” he admits. It feels like an admission of... _something_ ; never mind that he’s not sure what.

Maybe he _does_ die just a little when Lance beams, rising on his knees and leaning forward to kiss him across the little plastic model of the known universe, his hands sandwiching Keith’s cheeks and his lips feathering up and down and all over Keith’s face in sloppy concentric circles—and all the planets hang together, safe in their places, turning gently on.


End file.
